


Roadside

by kaige68



Series: Bright Lights [4]
Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Community: 1_million_words, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaige68/pseuds/kaige68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>the moment when Stiles had finally fallen asleep.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roadside

**Author's Note:**

> Follows after [Bright Lights](http://kaige68.livejournal.com/252678.html), [A Thing](http://kaige68.livejournal.com/261288.html), and [Junkie](http://kaige68.livejournal.com/262875.html).
> 
> **Beta:** Read through by [](http://haldoor.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://haldoor.livejournal.com/)**haldoor**! Thank you so much, hon. All remaining errors are my own doing.  
>  **Warning:** Contains spoilers for Season 3a, deviates from Season 3b.

The monsters didn’t usually snag him. Not that they didn’t ever, it just wasn’t typical.

Stiles leaned against the back door of his father’s county-owned SUV as he thought about it. Generally the monsters either underestimated him, or they didn’t even consider him. No, when Stiles was kidnapped/bargained for/tortured, and it’s a gross generalization to say so, it was humans that grabbed him up.

Fuckers who used guns, knives, crossbows, and blow darts instead of the things that nature or magic had given them. Always grasping for whatever they could get. Yeah, most time, Stiles hated people.

*~*~*

Scott listened in the quiet car, knew the moment when Stiles had finally fallen asleep. He looked over from the passenger seat to the Sheriff. The man looked so much older than he had a year and a half ago. As though learning about monsters had aged him in a way that even losing his wife hadn’t.

He wanted to reach out and pet at the Sheriff’s shoulder. Scott wished, for once, that it could have been him that the hunters had been trying to gain the upper hand on when they’d taken Stiles, and not his BFF’s dad.

They wanted access to the Sheriff’s records. They wanted him on the hook to call them when a beast made an appearance. They wanted control of the man.

But Stiles was safe for the moment. The Argents would bring their ‘co-workers’ before a tribunal. And the Stilinskis would go back to normal, for them.

*~*~*

The sheriff pulled quickly to the side of the road. Jumping out, he didn’t bother closing his own door, he just reached through the open backseat window trying to subdue, pacify, tame his son. The same way that Scott was trying to do from the front seat.

Stiles screamed, flailed. He clawed and slapped, writhed away from both of them. Hollering in pain, repeating ‘no’.

“Stiles, you need to wake up.” Scott said firmly, adamantly, from where he was reaching. “It’s just a dream, Stiles. Wake up now.”

“Come on, Stiles. It’s Dad, you’re safe, just wake up. Please.” He felt himself choke on the last word.

It wasn’t working. They were a mile from home when Stiles started to get agitated. Scott had tried to wake him, and then… Then the man that he remembered as the tiny baby he brought home from the hospital all those years ago… Then Stiles started screaming as though he was being tortured. And nothing that he and Scott were doing was calming his son down.

John looked the True Alpha in the eye. “Call Derek. He shouldn’t be that far behind us. Tell him to step on it.”

“But… um….”

“I know. Alright, Scott, I know. Just call Derek.” He turned back to his son to watch helplessly.

*~*~*

Later, the Sheriff would be in awe of the restraint that Derek showed. Later he would consider how impressive it was that Derek had been able to stop his car while getting out, that he hadn’t ripped the door off the Sheriff’s SUV when he opened it, that he’d taken such care when he’d wrenched Stiles from the back-seat and into his arms.

Stiles had struggled for a moment, but struggling against Derek was a fruitless effort. Eventually Derek sat in the dirt and gravel that marked the road’s shoulder. Calm and patience in his voice as he told Stiles that he was dreaming, that it was just a dream, that it was time to wake up.

The Sheriff watched his son still, watched his breathing even out, waited to talk until he was sure Stiles was awake and okay, and then watched another violent spasm overtake Stiles, watched it start over again. Three times it happened, three times his son looked awake and was pulled back down into his nightmare. When Stiles calmed for the fourth time, when he’d stayed calm for several minutes, John asked. “Is he awake now?”

Derek nodded, still holding Stiles in his lap.

“What happened?” he asked, still feeling out of the loop about too many things.

“It’s like _Inception_ ,” Scott said as if that explained it all. When he met the Sheriff’s eyes, saw the _WTF_ look. “It’s like a dream within a dream within a dream. Like the movie.”

“Someone is drugging him and controlling his dreams?” John got louder, angrier.

“No,” Derek supplied, voice still the patient calmness he’d used before. “Stiles has a nightmare, thinks he’s woken from it but is just in another nightmare. And thinks he wakes from that only to be in another one. Sometimes it goes on for a while and he has a hard time believing he’s really awake when he finally is.”

“And the light helps?” John felt another wave of guilt wash over him at being the reason his son had a black spot in his heart to begin with.

“Yeah, Dad, it does.” Stiles voice sounded shredded and weak. He turned to Scott with a smile. “If this is _Inception_ , I wanna be Joseph Gordon-Levitt.”

Scott snorted a laugh. The moment on the side of the road finally feeling lighter. “Dude, you’re Ellen Page and you know it.”


End file.
